Are we talking the best player on the best team in the nation, even during its worst performance of the season? The answer is Ingram.

Are we talking the best player on the field for either of these top-10 teams in the biggest game in this stadium in ages? The answer is Ingram.

Are we talking the only true Heisman Trophy candidate in the house at the end of the day? The answer is the defending Heisman winner. Ingram.

Alabama doesn't beat Arkansas 24-20 without him. Period. End of sentence. End of discussion.

Alabama doesn't come back from 13 points down, the second-largest mountain it's scaled under Nick Saban, and Alabama doesn't take the lead for the first time all day with 3:18 to play if No. 22 is still recovering from knee surgery.

Which should be the unkindest cut of all for Arkansas.

Ingram is less than a month removed from knee surgery. He sat out two games and hasn't missed a step since.

The junior put up big numbers again in his second action of the season - 24 carries, 157 yards, two touchdowns - but his moments mattered more.

First quarter. Arkansas stuns the visiting team and lathers up the home crowd with a two-play, two-pass, 74-yard TD drive off the opening kick. Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett looks as if he's ready to ride this wave of emotion to victory and beyond, to a Heisman Trophy of his own.

Two series later, Ingram calms the red sea with a 54-yard touchdown run. I could tell you that it included two left jabs disguised as stiff-arms that would make Sugar Ray Leonard proud, but let Ingram describe it.

"It was a great run," he said. "It was blocked perfectly. I made the read. We always take pride in not letting the first guy tackle us. Gave him a stiff-arm. I was stumbling a little bit. The other guy came. I gave him a stiff-arm. Then tight-roped the sideline and got in. It was a great run."

Don't know how he does it, but only he could call his own great run "a great run" and manage not to sound arrogant.

But his best work was still to come.

Fourth quarter. Alabama's offense is supposed to be a machine, but it played much of the game with screws loose. Ditto the defense, which looked more out of place at times than lipstick on a pig.

When the defense put itself in the right place at the right time and Robert Lester intercepted Mallett for the second time, the offense had the ball 12 yards from its first lead of the day.

The decision for offensive coordinator Jim McElwain was no decision. He put Ingram in the wildcat. Ingram powered 7 yards on first down and 4 yards on second down.

On third down, just for fun, Greg McElroy went back under center, but only to hand to Ingram to get the hardest yard for the touchdown and the lead at last.

One more ill-advised Mallett marshmallow and Dre Kirkpatrick pick later, and Alabama had the ball with 1:48 to kill.

McElwain didn't have to be a rocket surgeon to make the calls from there. Ingram in the wildcat. Once, twice and one more time for 9 ½ yards. McElroy got the final few feet on a sneak, and Alabama escaped.

There was no escaping the truth after Alabama's toughest test since the Iron Bowl. When his teammates wobbled, Ingram refused to let them go down.

"I love it," he said. "Great players, great teams thrive on situations like that. Those are things you dream about as a kid, seeing (Michael) Jordan play, seeing Barry Sanders run the ball. Things like that, you just dream of."

This road trip was a reality check for a very good football team with flaws. Anyone who believed Alabama could be just as good a team without Ingram wasn't dreaming.